Murder at the Lanterne Rouge

by Cara Black

  “I’m researching fourteenth-century glassmaking guilds.” That much was true. “That star window is so different from everything around it.…”

  “Striking, that sparkle. So different, like you say. Not like any other glass I’ve seen. Yet you’re asking the wrong person. Who would know now?”

  “Have you heard any legends or stories about this window?”

  She paused in thought. “Funny, someone else asked me that.”

  Had Pascal been searching for the window’s secret? René turned and looked down at her. “Reddish hair, glasses?”

  “Your associate?”

  Saddened, René gave a brief nod. “But what did you tell him?”

  “The same as you.” Her expression became bashful. “It’s nothing, but after vespers at night, when I change the altar linens, well …”

  “Go on, Evangeline,” he said.

  “The light streaming from the star,” she said. “It’s almost as if the star grabs the streetlight from outside. Somehow transfuses, brightens, or magnifies it, sending a sheer white light beam. That’s not explaining it well. But there’s a radiance, a clearness. Power.” She gave another lopsided smile. “Silly, eh?”

  René stepped down from the chair. Sat and tied his shoes, his mind working. “I think I know what you mean. Merci.”

  THE WORDS PLAYED in René’s mind: grabs, transfuses, magnifies. Power. Pascal had found part of the formula for this special glass hidden in the museum’s archives and … what? Tried to replicate it? And couldn’t?

  The question rearing up in his mind was why a fourteenth-century document had been hidden in a museum devoted to the pre- and post-industrial revolution. Pascal must have stumbled across the stained-glass window formula either miscataloged or hidden centuries ago in the Archives Nationales, stored during the war. And as Aimée had intimated, found its relevance today.

  René gunned down rue Saint-Martin heading toward the Archives Nationales. The archives held a place to work in peace and find answers.

  Sunday, Noon

  AIMÉE PARKED HER scooter at the museum’s entrance. Her mind spun. They still hadn’t found Pascal’s laptop or figured out what the diagram meant, or heard what Clodo had witnessed. Let alone identified the murderer.

  But the DST was on her tail. She’d promised Meizi protection before she could guarantee it. She hadn’t discovered the time of the raid or any other information Meizi could feed Tso. She shuddered. If Meizi got caught, René would never forgive her.

  She left another message for Prévost. Why had she ignored his comment that he owed her father and not questioned him? Chinatown had never been her father’s beat.

  Yet she’d set wheels in motion—herself connecting with Jean-Luc, Saj working on the encryption, René at church. But the DST expected information and she needed to give them something.

  Sunday, 5 P.M.

  AIMÉE WORKED OFF two laptops in the vaulted Gothic nave, wishing the faded tapestries didn’t smell their age. She’d spent hours alone in the dark alcove transferring the Musée des Arts et Métiers’ archaic database to the new digital operating system. On the other laptop, she ran a concurrent search for a fourteenth-century document. Fruitlessly.

  She backed up a 1695 water pump invention to the digital archive. Hit SAVE. Done.

  She pulled her silk scarf tighter against the chill and sighed. Only three more centuries to go. Her boots rested on a smooth paver engraved with Latin, a remnant of the original tenth-century abbey. Norman columns blended into the Gothic priory, evidence of the Parisian habit of building on centuries of history. She was surrounded by history.

  And by ghosts.

  The creakings and shiftings in the building unnerved her. What sounded like whispers came from the adjoining chapel. The wind? She stifled her unease and focused on her screen. But after several hours, her stiff neck decided for her that the rest would have to wait. Time to go.

  Her cell phone vibrated in her pocket.

  “Still working, Aimée?” asked René.

  “Just backed up the seventeenth century,” she said.

  “Any luck finding Pascal’s file?”

  “Not yet, desolée,” she said. “Nor the log he supposedly signed in on. Odd. Hope you had better luck with the stained-glass window.”

  “I spent the afternoon at the Archives,” he said, excitement in his voice. “Get this, Aimée. Pascal’s diagram is a map.”

  “A map?” Why had Pascal made this so difficult?

  Gargoyle-like stone carvings stared down at her, their disembodied faces like masks in the stonework. She rubbed the goosebumps on her arms.

  “Long story,” he said. “The map leads through the medieval sewers.”

  “They didn’t have sewers then, René.”

  “Zut, I know. Now it’s the sewer, going right to rue Charlot, rue Meslay, and along rue Béranger, where he lived.”

  “No sewers for me.”

  Or army of rodents wintering underground. She’d faced enough of those already.

  “There’s more,” René said. “There is one remaining Templar tower Napolean forgot to destroy. The church’s stained-glass window lies in a direct line from the south end of its old wall.

  The wind rattled the scaffolding bars lining the nave. Her mind went back to her conversation with Jean-Luc at the piano bar: Samour’s message to Jean-Luc mentioning an atelier. Another piece fitting in Samour’s damned puzzle.

  “Of course, that’s it,” she said. “His work studio, René. Where is it?”

  “73 rue Charlot. Bring his keys.”

  He clicked off before she could ask him if he’d reached Meizi.

  All of a sudden there was a high-pitched whine from a distant fuse box. Then the building plunged into darkness. A power outage.

  She froze, rigid with fear. She was wrapped in darkness, alone, just as she’d been last night. She recalled the sensation of those huge hands around her neck, the plastic bag over her face, straining to breathe. Had he come back to finish the job? Move, she had to move. Quickly she closed the programs on her laptop, not wanting to linger under the groaning scaffolding lacing the nave. It seemed as if it could topple any minute in this blackness.

  Or did she imagine it?

  She shuddered. The only light came from the stained-glass window in the chapel. Beautiful and unnerving.

  “Monsieur Vardet?” she called out to the security guard. Her voice echoed in the nave. She didn’t like this.

  The soft flutter of snow settled like a sigh on the protective plastic sheeting, and again she saw Pascal’s eyes under the snow-dusted plastic. “Sécurité?” Where was Vardet?

  “Par ici, Mademoiselle, no cause for alarm,” Vardet’s reassuring voice answered. “You’ll need to exit through the refectory. Let me show you out.”

  Thank God.

  TEN MINUTES LATER, Aimée stood in the porte cochère of 73 rue Charlot under a clicking timed light. The snow lay upon upturned cobblestones like confectioner’s sugar in the deep courtyard.

  “This leads to the tower in the remaining bit of Templar wall, Aimée.” René pointed to the mildewed wooden door. “Try Samour’s keys.”

  She felt in her bag for the keys she’d taken from under the geraniums, inserted the largest, old-fashioned one, like the key her grandmother used to the cellar on her farm. She heard a tumble as the well-oiled lock turned.

  Winding stone steps, deep and narrow. No handrails but uneven walls to feel their way upward. Like entering the Dark Ages.

  On the first landing stood a hinged wooden door with a beaten metal clasp. Original, no doubt. She inserted the key again, turned it, and pushed the door open to a mustiness laced with chocolate.

  René hit a wall light switch, flooding the circular tower room with light. Aimée saw a blackboard covered with formulas in blue chalk, and an open laptop with a blinking green light on a long trestle table. Next to it, a distilling apparatus. Test tubes, glass flacons, and copper wires. An alchemist’s lab down
to the medieval walls. Then she saw what looked like a small, industrial, high-temperature stainless-steel oven.

  She gasped.

  “That’s it, René.” She ran forward, excited. “The drawing in the encryption.”

  She sniffed the contents of the cellophane bag by the laptop. Chocolate. Popped one in her mouth. “Dark-chocolate espresso beans. Pascal had good taste.”

  “Thinking what I’m thinking, Aimée?” René asked.

  “That Samour distilled his own absinthe? Not quite.”

  But René had opened up the screen on Samour’s laptop.

  “Look, it’s the same alchemical formula Saj deciphered. Why did he hide this, yet …”

  “More than why, René, from whom,” she said. “Trawl around and see if you find more.”

  She stared at the formulas in intricate blue chalk. Meaningless to her. A funnel of white sand, technical magazines, a fiber optics newsletter on an Aeron chair. An incongruous collection until de Voule’s words came back to her.

  “He told his classmate no one has invented anything new since the fourteenth century. What if he tried to prove that here?”

  René rolled his eyes. “By making stained glass in an ancient alembic? Melting the contents in that machine?”

  She remembered the preliminary autopsy report. “He had burn marks on his hands,” she said. “It could have come from this heater. The guilds worked with little more than sand, potash, and fire.”

  René put his camera in her hands. “Check out the real masterpiece, from the church. The camera captures little of the star’s clarity. But you get the idea.”

  The stained-glass window images conveyed bright, streaming light. “Such radiance. Amazing.”

  Perplexed, she picked up the magazines. “It’s all here, but we don’t understand.”

  “Think where we are.” René’s finger traced the diagram. “Inside the fortified walls of an old Templar enclosure.”

  “Et alors, I took that history class, too, René.” She ran her fingers over the smooth glass alembic. “But it proves what?”

  “We’re in the last remaining Knights Templar tower.” René grinned. “It’s part of the prison where Marie Antoinette and her children were kept.”

  “Not all that Holy Grail business.”

  René snorted. “Think of the Templars as investors in startups,” he said. “They had more money than kings, or the Pope.”

  “So you took Medieval Studies 101 at the Sorbonne?”

  “Fundamentals of Economics, second semester.” René went on, “So the Templars were venture capitalists, this tower was their Silicon Valley. Instead of developing microprocessors, the Templars built cathedrals, castles, a whole series of industries. They employed the guilds for research and development in architecture, weapons, communication.”

  Pascal would have appreciated René’s enthusiasm for his project. René got to work on the laptop. Pulled his goatee. “No wonder there’s been no more activity, his laptop’s frozen.”

  “Try mine. See if you can unfreeze and network.”

  René stood engrossed at the trestle table, comparing Aimée’s backed-up work from the Musée. She checked the magazines, the newsletter. Nothing jumped out at her. She tried to make sense of this, put things together.

  Finally, René broke the silence. “Samour’s search prints show all over the Musée files you digitized today, Aimée.”

  So Samour had been looking. “That’s what I’ll tell the DST.”

  “Make sure that’s all you tell them. We found this tower on our own.” René plugged a cable from Aimée’s laptop to Samour’s. Hit several keys. “I’m rebooting his laptop and will network it to ours.” He tugged his goatee again. “Why didn’t Mademoiselle Samoukashian tell you about this tower?”

  “Pascal protected her,” she said. “Considering his diagrams and secrecy, it’s like he wanted to discover something here.”

  “Or prove it before he showed anyone,” René said.

  She picked up the newsletter, thumbed through it until an article caught her attention. “Aren’t fiber optics made of glass?”

  René looked up, nodding. His eyes met hers and widened.

  She lifted a slim, colorless strand, little thicker than a hair, from the drawer. “Like this?”

  René blinked. “Fiber optics is a hot market in telecommunications these days,” he said. “Bundle that up with more strands and it will carry up to ten million messages, using light pulses.” He shot her a look. “Not chump change either.”

  “Bon, I’ll ask my dinner date about it,” she said, applying Chanel Red to her lips. “He runs one of those things.”

  “The same mec from last night?”

  Odd, she could have sworn René sounded … non, not jealous, he had Meizi. But concerned.

  “How’s Meizi?”

  His brow creased. “I’m worried. She’s at the hotel, but doesn’t answer the phone.”

  Aimée buttoned her coat. “You’re staying until I come back?”

  “Until I find something,” René said, a grim set to his mouth. “I’ll have Saj bring what he finds over and we’ll work on this together.”

  A quiver ran down her spine. “Whoever murdered Samour didn’t find this place, René. The murderer is still looking.”

  “Then make sure you’re not followed, Aimée.” René pulled out the diagram. “According to this, if you go left in the courtyard there’s an exit to rue de Picardie.”

  Her heeled boots clicked down the tower’s steep, damp staircase. And then she missed a step, lost her balance. She caught a rusted ring in the wall and held on for dear life. No broken bones, no fall, but a scuffed leather heel and a pang in her sore wrist. Damn medieval towers.

  Her phone beeped. One new message. Prévost.

  “Give me Clodo’s phone and I’ll tell you when the raid’s scheduled.”

  Nothing else.

  She hit callback. Tried to leave a message, but his voice mail was full.

  She had to find Clodo’s phone.

  “WHAT’S THE WEATHER report tonight, Monsieur?” She smiled at the homeless man on the grate at Carreau du Temple.

  “Radio’s broken, ma chère.”

  “This should help,” she said, laying twenty francs on his sleeping bag. “How’s your daughter?”

  “Doing her homework.” His face lit up.

  “Don’t you have something for me?”

  He handed her the prepaid phone card she’d given him. “Desolé, I couldn’t find a phone cabin. Everyone has mobiles.”

  Disappointed, she wanted to kick the grate. She needed a bartering tool for Prévost. A way to protect Meizi.

  “But you’re interested in this, non?” A cell phone. “I can’t vouch it’s the one Clodo took, but rumor goes it is.”

  “Brilliant.” She slipped him a hundred francs. “Don’t forget I count on your weather predictions for my wardrobe.”

  Now she had something to bargain with Prévost. Finally, the trail smelled like it went somewhere.

  But she was late. At the small square, she spied a taxi, ran to catch it and jumped in, and overtipped the driver for the short six-block ride.

  But the maître d’ at the bistro shook his head. “Desolé, the monsieur changed your dinner reservations to seven thirty. An urgent meeting. He apologizes.”

  More than an hour away. Why hadn’t Jean-Luc called her? Then she remembered she hadn’t given him her number. Stupid.

  But she had his. She got only his voice mail, left a message to call her.

  “Why don’t you wait at the bar? I’m sorry, Mademoiselle, blame it on the symposium. The attendees booked the whole bistro.”

  She glanced around. Suits in earnest conversations, consulting handheld calendars under the dark oak beams. Great. “Any idea where the symposium’s held?”

  He shrugged.

  So now she’d have to wait in the crowded bistro where she couldn’t hear herself think, or roam the dark, wet street?


  She didn’t think so. She wedged a place at the bar by an engineering type, a young man with thick-framed glasses, an ill-fitting suit, and licorice-black hair.

  “My friend Jean-Luc’s late to meet me from the symposium.” She smiled.

  “Which symposium?” he asked, his eyes catching on her cleavage. The pianist in the corner struck up “L’Heure Bleue,” the Françoise Hardy version.

  “You know … he’s with Bouygues … I forgot …”

  “Do you mean fiber optics in today’s world? Or fiber optics infrastructure in the Third World?”

  Fiber optics. “I’m not sure.”

  “No matter, they’re both held at the old cloister, on rue des Archives. Cloître des Billettes.”

  Close by.

  He smiled, revealing a set of braces that caught the light. He looked twelve. “Like a drink?”

  “Next time.”

  She’d crash the symposium and find Jean-Luc. Too bad she didn’t have her business suit.

  Three blocks away, she only had to wait a few minutes before a group of men exited the arched doors of the cloister. She slipped inside. Quiet reigned, broken only by the drip of melting snow on worn pavers. She passed under the fifteenth-century vaulted arcade surrounding the small courtyard.

  She half expected robed religious figures treading in prayer. But at the far end, a door opened to a crack of light and voices. A place to start, she thought. Inside, she found a cavernous chapel with men huddled by pillars, signs posting seminars in various rooms, and a label reading Wine Reception on the sacristy door. But the sacristy was empty. Jean-Luc could be in a meeting anywhere here, or somewhere else entirely.

  But she could learn about fiber optics. She consulted a symposium schedule in the main chapel and headed to the first room on the right. The meeting had broken up. A few people lingered by a grouping of red velvet gilt-backed chairs, thick binders under their arms. Above them on the sandblasted stone wall, a canvas banner read: Information Highways—Fiber Optics in the 21st Century. René would eat this up. And ask for another helping.